


Now What's Become Of Me?

by aphoticdepths



Category: Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, Chronic Illness, Everything Is Terrible Forever, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Whatever The Fuck Happens At Piranesi, Other, Shippy Gen, Whump, minor piranesi spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 10:36:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18030128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphoticdepths/pseuds/aphoticdepths
Summary: In their last days, an agent of Albion goes to Piranesi to see an old enemy.





	Now What's Become Of Me?

Their head was pounding, a sick pain half like the nauseous pounding of a migraine and half like daggers being stabbed behind their eyes. Winning, the Diplomat reflected, had not been as pleasant as they had hoped. The eye and a good bit of their cheek was glass, and their vitrified bones gave stabs of agony with anything from walking to writing. So it was with most of the old guard. Even hours couldn’t give you time devise an instant protection, and they had made enough trips to make sure their interests were protected that they’d gotten enough light to be like this. Better off than the Commodore, at least. They were hardly a scientist and no one knew much about the effects of the Clockwork Sun, but they didn’t need medical expertise to know that they didn’t have long left.

Thus the visit. They leaned back against their seat as the train docked. Not official. They’d be flayed alive. But there were plenty of captains on their payroll, now as there had been before. This one even had seats soft enough that the pain from shards of glass in their shoulders was merely agonizing.

They gathered the cane, their only concession to the rich rewards the Dawn-Machine had given to them, and got to their feet. Hours enough to make them feel younger than they had in a long time, but all the exposure they’d had to get those had made them move like a particularly fragile octogenarian. The Captain walked ahead of them, directing them to a dock and then to a cottage. 

They’d known the Grey Conformer, too, but only through a haze of rumor and secondary accounts. They still gave her a nod and smile as they introduced themself to the Chaplains, explaining the basics-that they were a diplomat, interested in seeing someone they knew who had been interred.

The Glib Performer laughed delightedly as the Glistening Deformer studied them. “They will not be as you remember them,” he said in a sonorous tone.

“I know that,” they said, words laced with derision.

“You will need a guide,” the Grey Conformer said. “We can-“

“As I said, I know that. I did my work before coming here.”

“And?” the Glib Performer asked, delightedly. “I am so sure you picked a guide out as well, since you have done so very much research.”

“Indeed I did.” He had already risen. The other Chaplains watched.

As they left, the Diplomat sighed. “Let’s stop pretending.”

“Really? You did come here to see  _ me?  _ I must admit, that’s quite surprising! Oh, are you planning on a spot of torture? Would liven things up a bit, but I doubt it would have the effect you were hoping for-“

They held up a hand in an attempt to stop his prattle. “Surprisingly enough, no. I simply wanted to think about where our paths have led us.” They couldn’t help a sardonic smile. “Think back to the good old days.”

He laughed, shrill and cackling. “Well, come on then! Follow me!”

They did so, though it was a struggle. The staircase was steep and long, and while their muscles were only invigorated by the end, each broken-glass step had reduced them to taking breath in in hisses as they used their cane as a crutch. Ahead of them, the Performer capered up the stairs with a tightly wound energy. They remembered a time when they had lounged alert and ready for a fight and he had kept each movement restrained. And now…

The balcony was thick with mist, and might have been considered dizzyingly high. “Welcome to my home away from home!” the Performer said as he twirled around, spreading his arms wide. “What did you come to talk about? I must admit, this is a pleasant surprise. Then again, from what I remember, I’m probably much easier for you to deal with like this than I was as a London stuffed shirt.”

They shrugged. It wasn’t right. Even at their greatest hate for him, the idea of him as this gleeful, capering thing would have simply been unthinkable. A departure from everything he was. It was so utterly wrong they wouldn’t have even considered it. “Perhaps. How much  _ do  _ you remember?”

He shrugged. “Bits and pieces. It’s all very foggy. All I really remember is a lot of paperwork and port reports and that I wasn’t any fun at  _ all _ .”

“...You were too important to be killed, you know,” they told him, looking down into the impossible geometry and inky mists. “They would just have put the Sun into your head.” It would have been better than this, they did not say. “What we have in Albion is all you ever wanted, you know. She’s in charge again.”

He gave another rapid shrug. “I really don’t remember what I wanted, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t think the same. I suppose you’ll just have to wonder about what I might have thought forever!” He leapt up on a crumbling rail, spreading his arms wide for balance. “If you're asking me what I think now, though, Albion is really just no fun at  _ all,  _ though. So many rules and regulations! It must be absolutely dreadful for you. From what I remember, you’re someone who appreciates fun.”

“I am,” they allowed with a smile. They did not ask him why he would have done this instead, when even the most dazzled by the Sequence were better than this.

He turned to them with a smile full of shining teeth. “So just why did you visit here, I wonder?”

“When things have changed this much over ten years, is it even possible to not make sure that it’s all real?” And then, because he was in a prison in the middle of nowhere and had a guile and sharpness he hadn’t had before, “And besides, I’m making a business of tying up loose ends. The Empress is generous to her servants, but the same can’t be said for the Sun.”

He hooted delightedly. “Now isn’t that just  _ wonderful!  _ What an utterly hilarious story!” He spun around to sit down on a crumbling ridge of stone, still cackling. 

They refrained from pointing out that so far, they’d stayed around longer than the man he’d once been had. They couldn’t really stop themself from smiling, either. “It is, really.”

 

The Performer frowned at them, and it was something horrible, because the disapproval and anger was an expression he might have worn before. “It’s no fun if  _ you  _ think it’s funny.”

“I’ve always had more of a sense of humour than you do, you know. Even if you’re trying to catch up, you’re a bit late.”

He burst into another hysterical fit of laughter, and when he said, “How did we ever not get on?” they couldn’t help themselves from joining in and laughing at everything. At the rewards Albion had given them both, at the sea and at the sky, at the mad prison that trapped him and the glass that sharpened them, and at what they’d both become. 

The two of them laughed together, shrill and hysterical in the impossible balconies. Whenever one of them stopped, the other’s bursts of giggles would drive them into more fits of glee. They would have laughed themselves to tears, but with his sockets and the glass that had started beneath their eyepatch, they only had one eye that could cry between them.

When they had both died down to grinning and gasping for breath, the Performer hopped to his feet. “Well, we ought to go back. I’m sure the other Chaplains will come reprimanding me for killing you at any moment.”

“Were you going to have?”

He shrugged. “Well, I would have if the opportunity showed itself, but look at how well we ended up getting on! Memories are such funny things.” He capered down the stairs as they got to their feet and followed him. “Do tell me everything on the way down. How are things in London? No, not  _ politics _ !” he added as soon as they opened their mouth. “What’s in the papers? What has the weather been like? How good are the scones? I heard…”

Decades of spying gave them an ability to keep up with some of the stream of prattle that was poured at them, though it was more difficult than they’d expected. The Performer gave a flourishing bow as they arrived back at the cottage.

“Thank you,” they said.

“Did you find what you sought?” the Conformer asked with no emotion.

“Indeed I did. I thank you all, chaplains.” They gave a bow of their own. “This was indeed an enlightening visit.”


End file.
